Avengers: Endgame Villains That Will Be In The Movie You Won't Expect
If there’s one thing about Avengers: Endgame that we should all be able to agree on, it’s that Thanos will be the big bad of the movie (unless the Russo’s decide to pull some unlikely twist). But just because he’s playing the role of final boss doesn’t mean that other villains can’t possibly step into the spotlight during the film, be it as actual threats, setups for future plots, or as unexpected helpers. As it stands there are some fairly decent candidates waiting in the wings. Whom might we see make an appearance then?
The Red Skull
So, Avengers: Infinity War treated us to the answer to one of the biggest questions surrounding the MCU, one that had been lingering around for years: what the hell happened to the Red Skull? We saw the supervillain disappear into a void created by the Tesseract (Space Stone) back in Captain America: The First Avenger, and then that was it; there was no explanation at the time as to what happened to him. Sure, we could have just assumed he was dead, which most of us grudgingly did because his actor didn’t want to play him anymore, but with the way his disappearance was portrayed, it definitely looked more like he had been transported somewhere. Now we know that the Space Stone dropped him off at Vormir, where he was subsequently cursed with being the guardian of the Soul Stone.
The Soul Stone is one of the more important stones of the lot, so much so, that there are multiple theories stating that it’s the primary stone of the bunch needed to bring back the “fallen” (those lost to Thanos’ snap). It’s believed that the Soul Stone rules over its very own pocket dimension known as the Soul World and that the Soul World currently houses the souls of everyone killed by Thanos’ snap. Considering the Red Skull had been guarding the Soul Stone for years, he probably knows all the important details surrounding it. If the Avengers make the decision to try and reverse the snap, they may head over to Vormir to find answers--answers that the only the Red Skull would be able to give.
This would also be an interesting opportunity for Steve’s character. The Red Skull was the first supervillain Steve ever fought, and with the air of finality that Endgame has around him, a meeting with the Red Skull would be a nice call back to the first Avengers roots. All in all, the Red Skull seems to have a very high chance of making a reappearance in Endgame.
Yon-Rogg / The Kree
While it was ungraceful, Yon-Rogg did manage to survive the events of Captain Marvel. The man may as well have pulled off a miracle considering the MCU’s track record with their villains. Since he is still alive, we think it’s reasonable to believe that he’ll serve some sort of purpose in the near future. And since Captain Marvel is the prelude to Endgame, Endgame may turn out to be this said future.
We don’t know what the Kree empire has been up to in the 24 year time period between Captain Marvel and Infinity War, but it’s probably safe to assume that they’ve been trying their damndest to not let Carol destroy them. If they found Captain Marvel called off her assault on them out of nowhere (to answer Nick Fury’s distress call), they’ll be curious, especially since Carol would have left them moments after half of the Kree disappeared as dust in the wind. Yon-Rogg could then be tasked by the Supreme Intelligence with going after Carol and learning about what’s going on. From there it’s a matter of whether or not Rogg will make the decision to help Carol fight Thanos or side with Thanos in an effort to get rid of her.
Thanos has had to deal with the Kree before. We saw in Guardians of the Galaxy that Thanos was willing to help Ronin the Accuser destroy the world of Xandar in exchange for the Kree warrior delivering the Power Stone to him. That very connection could be what draws the Kree back into the spotlight in Endgame. Of course, Thanos won't be making any deals with these guys this time as they’ve betrayed him before (at least a radical of theirs did).
But with his armies having taken a pretty big hit in Infinity War, we’re sure Thanos wouldn’t mind sacrificing a few Kree soldiers against the Avengers.
Ultron
The Vision is dead, and he didn’t have the benefit of being killed by the snap. He just effectively had his brain ripped out of his face. Still, the Vision’s consciousness is based off of programs--things that can be downloaded and backed up onto other hardware. While his body was unique, it’s not like he can’t get a new one.
That said, the Vision had the Mind Stone violently ripped away from him. The whole point of the Avengers benching him during the battle of Wakanada was so that they could prevent that from happening and remove it safely, hopefully allowing the Vision to retain who he is in the process. So since this didn’t happen, who would the Vision be if he was restored: would he be the Vision, or would he end up as our favorite megalomaniac robot, Ultron?
Bruce has stated that the Vision was more than just the Mind Stone: he’s the combination of Tony, Bruce, Javis, the Mind Stone, and Ultron. If we simplify this, it would mean that the Vision is Javis and Ultron merged through the Mind Stone. Now that the Mind Stone has been stolen away from Vision, it would make sense that the original personality created from it -- Ultron -- would be the dominant driving force.
If the Avengers, namely Bruce, decided that they were going to try and save at least one of their fallen allies through the Vision, then Ultron may very well have a way back to the land of the living. If this does turn out to be the case, then Ultron could either be a hindrance or a friend. He may want to carry out his original plan of destroying the Avengers, or he may want to get rid of Thanos after learning about his power. It all depends.
Talos / The Skrulls
Here’s another Captain Marvel villain. Alright, yeah, the Skrulls were revealed to be “good guys” in Captain Marvel, but are they really? The Skrulls make a habit of gaining people’s trust in order to achieve their goals. It’s very possible that they’re just playing the victim in order to get Carol to destroy the Kree for them. Regardless, their suffering the same fate as the rest of the universe: half of their population has been wiped out. They’ll want to know why.
Carol made it her mission to help the Skrulls find new homes, so their close to her. If she receives a distress call from Nick Fury just as half of the Skrulls are vanishing as dust clouds, she’ll probably believe that Nick knows something about what’s going on, and Talos and his people will follow her just to find out. The action would also double as a way for them to keep up appearances.
The end credits of Captain Marvel make it look like she made it to Earth alone, but she’s faster than the Skrulls ships, so it could just be that they’re just trailing behind her. Obviously, if the Skrulls make an appearance in Endgame, it will be to help the Avengers fight off Thanos. They basically gain less than nothing by working with him. In fact, they would lose a lot more.
This doesn’t mean that Endgame can’t use the opportunity to sprinkle little hints throughout the movie that the Skrulls are actually enemies in disguise, enemies that will turn out to be really complicated threats to deal with after everything with Thanos has been said and done. Marvel could use them to, we don’t know set up the next big MCU story. They could use them hin at a little something called Secret Invasion.
For those of you who don’t know what Secret Invasion is, it’s one of the many giant Marvel events to take place in the comics. In the comics, Secret Invasion is an event where the Skrull has invaded Earth in the guise of its superpowered heroes. The result is a all-out war between the heroes of Earth and the Skrulls. The twist is that the heroes don’t know who their fighting though. They can’t tell the Skrulls from their actual friends and you can probably imagine why that would be a problem when dealing with hostile aliens bent on killing you for not submitting to their rule.
Villains Who Probably Won’t Appear
With that we’ve gone over the majority of major MCU villains who would make some sense if they made appearances in Endgame. The others are either dead or not very important to the grand scheme of the movie. For instance, General Ross could have survived the snap, but it’s hard to imagine that he would serve some kind of important role now that the government that gave him power is more than likely in shambles. With Steve and the others out and about in public, it's fairly obvious that he’s not doing anything to deter them from doing whatever the hell they want.
But are there any villains that we don’t think will make an Endgame appearance? Sure. The buy-out Disney made from Fox just went into effect recently. That means that every Marvel property that Fox had the rights to now belongs to Disney, and by extension, Marvel. They now have access to Deadpool, all the X-Man, and the Fantastic Four. This includes each of the villains belonging to those respective properties. Despite that, we don’t think anyone from any of those franchises will be making into Avengers: Endgame, not even in the form of an after credits scene. Why?
Well Avengers: Endgame was shot back-to-back with Avengers: Infinity War. That means the scripting and everything else for the movie was done before the Disney-Fox deal went through. So, despite the fact that Endgame releases to the public after the deals completion, the fact remains that the MCU didn’t have the rights to use any of these characters while Endgame was still in production. Sadly, this means we won’t be seeing anyone related to these properties in Endgame. With this in mind, Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool won’t be blessing us with any Disney quips in any potential after-credits scenes. Oh, and we won’t be seeing any villains like Magneto or Doctor Doom popping up to present themselves as the next MCU final boss.
We mentioned dead villains a little earlier. Time travel has been a very big speculation surrounding Avengers: Endgame, and thus seeing past enemies may be a very possible thing. However, none of the previous villains who appeared in the MCU would really offer anything to the movie, the ones who would have already been mentioned. Everyone of Iron Man’s villains would be pointless. Captain America’s villains are either still alive (as far as we know) or no longer villains. Ant-Man’s, Black Panther’s, and the Guardians’ villains are in the same boat as Iron Man’s (Yon Rogg could explain anything about Ronin that hasn’t been answered). Finally, Thor’s villains share similarities to both Iron Man and Captain America’s. The gist is that none of them bring anything significant to the table storytelling wise, so what would be the point?
Recap
So what we end with is that the Talos (the Skrulls), Yon-Rogg (the Kree), Ultron, and Red Skull all have possible chances of making Avengers: Endgame appearances. Thanos will, of course, be the source of most of the movies conflict like he was in Infinity War, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be the only villain in the movie. Regardless of who appears though, Endgame is shaping up to be something exciting.
